Tribal effort to fix broken world hinges on condor

in this photo taken on Friday, Aug. 7, 2009, Yurok Tribe wildlife biotechnician Tiana Williams holds a turkey vulture in the hills above Orick, Calif., where it was trapped as part of the tribe's efforts to determine if the Klamath River canyon would be suitable habitat for condors. Lead poisoning is the leading cause of death in condors in the wild, and the tribe is taking blood samples to see if the turkey vultures are feeding on carcasses shot by lead bullets. The tribe's culture is based on the idea of regularly trying to fix what is wrong with the world, and bringing back the condor is part of that belief. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)
— AP

in this photo taken on Friday, Aug. 7, 2009, Yurok Tribe wildlife biotechnician Tiana Williams holds a turkey vulture in the hills above Orick, Calif., where it was trapped as part of the tribe's efforts to determine if the Klamath River canyon would be suitable habitat for condors. Lead poisoning is the leading cause of death in condors in the wild, and the tribe is taking blood samples to see if the turkey vultures are feeding on carcasses shot by lead bullets. The tribe's culture is based on the idea of regularly trying to fix what is wrong with the world, and bringing back the condor is part of that belief. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)
/ AP

In another attempt to measure lead levels, Tiana Williams sat hidden and quiet in the hills above Orick, watching the stinking remains of roadkilled deer and raccoons that would draw turkey vultures into a trap.

After graduating from Harvard in biochemistry, she came home to work for her tribe.

"They are considered a sacred animal," Williams said of condors. "You are never ever supposed to molest them. You are never supposed to kill them. We use their feathers for ceremonies. If you get a feather, it has to be given by the bird. You have to find it on the ground.

"Condors being the first animal we bring back to Yurok ancestral territory is a really powerful thing to me, as the first step toward renewal of our land."

After a bird struggled through a one-way wire entry into the trap, she threw a flannel sheet over it and held it gently in her lap. Biologist West inserted a needle in a leg vein, drawing blood to test for lead.

Lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for condors in the wild, said Chris Parish, condor program director for the Peregrine Fund, which breeds birds in Boise, Idaho, and releases them at the Grand Canyon.

To reduce the danger, the Peregrine Fund has worked with hunters to switch to non-lead bullets, and bring in the gut piles of animals they shoot so they won't be eaten by condors.

Aside from lead poisoning, there is little to stop condors from spreading clear up to British Columbia, Parish said.

"The habitat is suitable for them, the carrion is suitable for them," he said. "It's a matter of where we can gain the assistance of the hunting community."

At last count there were 180 condors in the wild in North America, up from 23 in the 1980s, said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Michael Woodbridge. Zoos and captive breeding programs have 176. Wild birds soar over Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, Zion National Park in Utah, the hills outside Ventura, Calif., the Big Sur area of California, and Baja California in Mexico.

The only condors on the North Coast have been stuffed for a century. One is at the Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka. The other is at Eureka High School.

The Clarke Museum also has three condor dance feathers decorated with white deerskin and red woodpecker feathers from the Karuk Tribe, neighbors of the Yurok, who share many of their ceremonies.

With few old feathers surviving, and no condors in the wild to drop new ones, Myers has borrowed feathers from other museums and brought them to dances. Lead singers in the White Deerskin Dance wear condor feathers in their headdresses.

"We know the eagle – the bald one – is important," said Myers. "The golden one is even more so. And the condor is above them."